Moa (Moa Book Series) [Kindle Edition]

From my blog On Starships and Dragonwings

Moa by Tricia Stewart Shiu is a YA paranormal about a high-schooler Hillary who goes to visit her sister for a peaceful summer vacation in Hawai'i and ends up meeting a spiritual entity, saving the world and finding out that she does indeed have something special and magical about her.
I received a copy of Moa for a blog tour.

Title: Moa
Authors: Tricia Stewart Shiu
Pages: 157
Genre-ish: YA Paranormal with an indie feel
Rating: ★★☆☆☆ - Promising premise, dragged down by writing
Setting: Moa is set in modern day Hawai'i but there is much more magic and spirits than what you thought. There are portals between heaven and earth and ancient guardians assist people to move through them.
Premise: The portal between heaven and earth has been closed by the negativity in the world (and an evil spirit?) and the narrator spirit Moa knows that Hillary is the one destined to help reopen the portal, thus saving the world (because if the portal isn't open the energies will get out of wack and volcanoes, death, destruction, etc).
Strengths:
A really interesting premise, I've always been a fan of the lore of Hawai'ian native culture and was excited to see a book using that
It was a cool idea to have the story told from the perspective of the ancient spirit instead of the heroine
The cover makes me happy just looking at it :)
I really liked the spells or prayer or whatever at the beginning of each chapter, though Hillary only seemed to use them a few times.... I honestly thought they were the best written.
Weaknesses:
The writing completely fall flat in this book; way more editing was needed (or just a spell checking program in general....) since one in ten sentences wasn't actually a grammatical sentence.... Also "tootsies" shouldn't be used instead of toes, ever, unless it's a children's book.... Also the semi-first person, semi-omniscient doesn't work well at all.
Half the book (literally every other paragraph at times) was a giant info dump that was sometimes a copy and paste repeat of a previous info dump. Show don't tell is a rule that Shiu really needs to work on more.
What the heck was up those illustrations? Maybe they would have look better in color since my Kindle isn't in color, but they didn't seem to relate to the story, they looked like they were done by a child, and they were completely distracting from the story....
The characters didn't seem all that concerned that the world was ENDING in THREE days unless they fixed it; they just went along for the ride and made rice for dinner
The lore and magic didn't seem to all fit that well together, getting a mix of native Hawai'ian myths combined with a heaven and angels concept, it just ended up feeling very forced and fluffy to me in the end.
Summary:
I've said before that YA isn't my favorite genre, but I really don't think that that was why I didn't like this book. The writing really needed more polish (or any polish....) to bring out what was definitely a promising premise. If you are able to see past clumsy and annoying writing to the interesting idea underneath, you'll probably like the book more than I did, but if you care about character depth, compelling writing, or grammar, I would skip this one unfortunately.

"The word, Anuenue, means Rainbow, for no one but the rainbow truly knows the location to its end."

It took me a very long time to get into this book. In fact, it took me a long time to get through it, yet it was so short ( 80 odd pages ). I can't really pin-point what it was about the story, but I often found myself becoming distracted and my mind would wonder to other things while reading. I even had to think back to parts of the book I had already read, as certain aspects of the story became confusing and it felt like I was trying to put together a puzzle, but the pieces didn't quite fit.

The flow of the story felt a bit rushed. I wish it had slowed down a little at times to make room for more character development. With so much going on in the story I wasn't able to build much of a connection to any of the characters. I liked that the story was told from Moa's POV, it was a nice change from the norm to have the POV change from third person to first person and back again, but with the view always being from the same character. I've never seen any other book written in this way.

The main focus of the book is about the battle for the Ancient Portal, but it is also a spiritual journey of accpetance and self-discovery. The characters are each holding onto something - anger, grief, even guilt - and as they fight their way to save Hawaii and ultimately the rest of the world, they are able to let go of these feelings. Even Moa, who for the most part is there to guide Hillary, Molly and Heidi, has her own inner journey to make. She is stuck in limbo, unable to move through the Portal, working as gatekeeper, but by the end of the book her life had changed and an entire new journey presented itself.

The little details within the story were very interesting, as were the many superstitions and beliefs of the Hawaiian people. The idea felt fresh but for some reason it just didn't deliver. I expected so much more from the story, but in the end it fell flat. It just wasn't for me.

Although there were so many things I couldn't quite get my head into while reading this book, I still believe it deserves some merit for the interesting facts, strange beings and overall uniqueness of the plot.

I just finished this amazing book and loved it. I started it, thinking this was a book for a teen and was skeptical that I would even enjoy it. I was pleasantly surprised, it turned out to be a novel that was filled with thought provoking and deep concepts. It took me on a journey that gave several enjoyable "aha" moments. I highly recommend this book and applaud the author on her writing ability! Kudos! I look forward to reading the next book in the series.